Egypt Unrest Boils Over

The Egyptian military swept into Cairo’s Tahrir square in an attempt to end a fifth day of clashes between protesters and police. The military sent armored cars and troops into the square in an attempt to separate the two sides, but soon demonstrators and police resumed throwing rocks and firing tear gas at one another. The Egyptian government earlier claimed that a truce between protesters and police had been reached. Officials say the death toll for the last five days has risen to 38. As the sixth day begins, demonstrators are calling for the military government to hand over power and Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi to resign. The U.N. has called for an investigation into the crackdown.

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Women are on the front lines of Egypt's latest protests, The footage below, from videographer Bridgette Auger, was filmed in Tahrir Square yesterday.

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Egypt's Shocking Nude BloggerBy Emily Esfahani Smith

Aliaa Maghda El-Mahdy, a 20-year-old dissident from Cairo, describes herself as a “secular liberal feminist vegetarian individualist Egyptian.” A college student, an atheist, and a blogger, she may seem like just another attention-seeking political activist. But her latest act of political rebellion has set off a firestorm in Egypt and in the Twitterverse of Arab dissidents.

In one of the nude self-portraits she posted this week on her blog, A Rebel’s Diary (warning: X-rated), which has received more than a million page views, she faces the camera wearing no more than a red ribbon in her hair, thigh-high tights, and red ballet flats. Mahdy’s photo, which shows one of her feet propped on a stool and a flash of defiance in her eyes, is erotic. “I took my nude photo myself in my parents’ home,” she writes.

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